Pages

Friday, April 27, 2012

I like animals, even ones
you can't eat. Especially ones you can't eat, as long as I don't have
to clean up their droppings.

1) The pink fairy armadillo is
the smallest armadillo in the world. It lives in the sandy plains and
grasslands of central Argentina. It's 3.5 to 4.5 inches (90-115 mm) long, and it looks like
this:

A nocturnal animal, the pink fairy armadillo makes its burrow near anthills, so it can feed on the ants and their larvae. It spends most of its time underground, using its large front claws to swim through the sandy soil. When it can't get ants, it feeds on insects, worms, snails and roots.

2) The maned wolf can be found in the grasslands and semi-forested areas of southeastern, central and southern Brazil. It has really long legs.

The maned wolf does not form packs, but is a solitary hunter. If mated, the maned wolf will defend its territory of 12 square miles (30 square kilometers) with the help of its mate. It eats birds, fish, rabbits and rodents, although more than half of its diet consists of sugarcane, root vegetables and fruits, such as the aptly named “wolf apple.” It is not, in fact, related to wolves, dogs, foxes, jackals, or coyotes, but is a separate canine species. While shy and not typically a threat to humans, the maned wolf has been historically hunted for its eyes, which were considered good luck. Though the animal is not endangered, the Brazilian government has awarded it protected status.

3) The okapi looks like a cross between a zebra, a giraffe and a horse, and also, look at its tongue:

GAAAH!

That tongue, just so you know, is long enough for the okapi to clean out its own ears. This is the Gene Simmons of the animal world.

The okapi stands 4.9 to 6.6 ft (1.5 to 2 meters) high and weighs about 440 to 660 pounds (200 to 300 kilos). They are solitary animals who prefer to see each other only when breeding. They have suffered from human encroachment, which has greatly reduced their habitat. While ancient Egyptians depicted the okapi in their carvings 2,500 years ago, the animal was not photographed in the wild until 2008.

It's found in the Amazon, Orinoco and Araguaia/Tocantins River systems and is endangered. It is one of only four extant species of freshwater dolphin, the fifth having gone extinct (probably our fault). It can grow to a length of 7.9 feet (2.4 meters) and weigh 217 pounds (98.5 kilos). The Amazon river dolphin's unfused neck vertebrae allow it to turn its head 180 degrees. It eats crab, catfish, turtles, shrimp, and piranha.

Something eats these. ~ Greg Hume

Local legend has it that, at night, the Amazon river dolphin turns into an irresistibly handsome young man who emerges from the river, makes sweet, sweet love with the young virgins of the town, and then returns to the river to regain his dolphin shape in the morning. Sounds like a good excuse to me.

5) The dugong is a marine mammal related to the manatee. Like the manatee, it looks ridiculous:

Juliem Willem

The dugong lives in coastal areas and feeds on sea grasses. It uses its large, flat forelegs to paddle through the water. It has historically been hunted for its oil and meat, and is now considered a vulnerable species due to hunting, human activities and damage to its habitat (also probably due to human activities). Scientists have determined that the dugong, while related to the manatee, is actually more closely related to the elephant. As if the name “dugong” weren't silly enough, the creature is also known as the “sea camel” or the “sea pig.” They can grow to a length of about 9.8 feet (3 meters) and weigh around 926 pounds (420 kilos).

Monday, April 23, 2012

Okay, it's getting better
now. But for a while there, it was really shriveling up. I went to
the doctor about some back spasms I was having, which seemed totally
normal on the surface because about ten years ago now I f*cked the
everliving sh*t out of my back, in that “holy crap how are you
still walking” kind of way, and long story short, I have chronic
back problems, and they're unpronounceable.

Of course I had to go to a
new doctor, cause I recently moved, and I was telling him all the
stuff that happened to my back – fell down, fractured L3 vertebra,
spondylolisthesis at L3, car accident, trauma-induced scoliosis from
T1 to T12 and reversal of cervical curve – and how I was having
spasms in my neck and between my shoulders (normal) and spasms in my
lower back (not so normal) and he was all, “Anything else?” and I
was all, “No...Oh, wait, actually, lately I've been having shin
splints after I jog but only in my right leg.”

As it turns out, you don't
get shin splints in only one leg. So the doc checked out my right leg
and it turns out it's shriveling up. Apparently the displaced
vertebra in my lumbar spine has displaced a little bit more and
caused some nerve damage which led to some muscle atrophy which would
have caused the leg to shrivel up whole buttloads more if I hadn't
thought to mention it, so go me.

I'm currently going through
some therapy to counteract the leg shriveling, and yes, it's growing
back, though not without a ton of odd and sometimes unpleasant
sensations in the shriveled leg at all times. Doc seems to think it's
the sitting down to work for several hours a day that's to blame for
this particular episode of My F*cked Up Back, not to mention the
several additional hours sitting down to look at Cracked, Memebase,
Facebook and Pinterest, and of course, this blog.

The things I do for you people.

For those of you who don't
know, recovery from these kinds of things generally involves
(*shudder*) “lifestyle changes,” and so I was, ahem, 'strongly
advised' to stop sitting down so much, as in, work standing up.

Everyone I've told about
this has had the same half-horrified, half-panicked reaction that
you're having right now, like, Oh my gawd you can't do that, how
can you do that,that's just unacceptable man YOU CAN'T DO
THAT, and you know, I wasn't exactly excited about it to begin
with myself, but GUESS WHAT.

THIS SH*T ROCKS.

For the first week or so, I
hated it. My legs were insanely tired – both of them, not just the
shriveled one – and my feet hurt like you wouldn't believe. I
wouldn't say it was the worst pain I'd ever experienced, cause you
know, broken back and all, but it was bad enough that by the end of
the day I was hobbling around because my feet were actually sore to
the touch.

Ow.

But I soldiered through,
because I'm tough, and it's not as if I've never spent a day on my
feet before. And eventually, miraculously (ok, maybe not
miraculously), I got used to it. And now, I can't believe I
haven't been doing it this way the whole time. I mean, I'm telling
you guys, THIS SH*T ROCKS. For instance:

My neck feels better
than it's felt in years. I used to have pretty much constant
discomfort in my neck and shoulders, but now it has totally cleared
up. Just like that.

I sleep better too –
and this is coming from an insomniac who's turned staying up all
night into an Olympic sport. If I was in the Hunger Games, I'd win
by sheer virtue of never closing my eyes.

According to what I've read online, standing up burns 50 more calories per hour than
sitting down. So I don't have to worry so much about that ten pounds
I've gained since I quit smoking.

For that matter,
according to my friend Kathryn and this author, sitting down all day
will straight-up freaking kill you, man.

I concentrate much
better now, which is kind of important since my paycheck depends on
actually getting stuff done, and not just looking busy till it's
time to go home.

I've also stopped
sitting on the computer for hours after I've finished work, and have
found lots of free time to do other things, like watch TV.

Oh TV, I've missed you.

And the best part of
all, as of last Tuesday, I've regained one centimeter of muscle mass
on the circumference of my shriveled leg, which means I've gained
back fifty percent of what I'd lost.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Happy Friday everyone! This
has been one of the best writing weeks I've had in a long time, and
to celebrate, let's take a look at the language that makes it all
possible: English!

I'm going to have trouble finding pictures for this one.

Here's one that I can't wait
to lord over my British friends as soon as I see them again:

1) Starting with the English
colonization of North America in about 1600, a distinct dialect of
American English began to emerge. If you're American and you know any
British people at all, you'll be familiar with that freaking annoying
habit they have of belittling you for your linguistic “mistakes.”

In fact, many of the
“Americanisms” that the British like to pretend they don't
understand are actually older British expressions that solidified
when they reached the American colonies. These include the use of
“loan” as a verb, the use of “trash” instead of “rubbish,”
and the use of “fall” instead of autumn.

2) While we're talking about
the British, they also keep bothering me about the
spelling/pronunciation of the American word “aluminum.” As in,
how in God's name could we make such an obvious mistake?

Sir Humphrey Davies, the
English chemist, discovered aluminum in 1807. It forms a base of the
chemical compound alum, so Davies named it “aluminum.” Later, in
1812, Davies changed the name to “aluminium,” because his
classically-educated colleagues liked the sound of it better.

That makes perfect sense.

Did
you get that, Britain? The American spelling is the older, and,
therefore, more correct
spelling.

This
linking together of letters to form commonly recognized symbols is
known as a “ligature,” and it was common in old Roman cursive. As
the centuries passed, other common ligatures disappeared from Latin
cursive and the ampersand began to evolve in appearance, until it
became the critter we know and love today.

Evolution: Not a lie. ~ Alatius

From
at least 1111 AD, the ampersand was included as a letter in the
English alphabet. The word “ampersand” came to being in the
1800s, when school children reciting the alphabet finished with the
phrase “and per se and,” where “per se” means “by itself”
or “singularly.” This phrase was gradually squished together and
mispronounced because that's what schoolchildren do.

Tee hee.

4) English emerged in the 5th century AD as tribes from what are today Germany and Denmark invaded
the south and east of England and pushed the native Celts into Wales,
Scotland and Ireland. Their dialects blended together to form
“Englisc,” or Old English. Old English picked up Latin words
already in use by the natives, including “candle,” “belt,”
“wall,” and “wine.” With the introduction of Christianity
late in the 6th
century AD, even more Latin words joined Old English. These were
mostly religious words like “bishop,” “eucharist” and
“presbyter.” When the Norse invaded in the late 9th
century AD, they brought words like “window,” “skin,” “egg”
and “husband.” After William the Conqueror arrived in 1066, Old
French became the language of court and government, Latin was the
most widely used written language, and English became the vulgar
tongue of the lower classes. The lower classes cooked for the upper
classes, which is why the words for livestock and game animals –
swine, sheep, ox, cow, deer, calf – are so different from the words
for their meats – pork, mutton, beef, venison, and veal.

<Obligatory picture with funny caption.>

5) People
who learn English as a second language often find it pretty
confusing, in part because it's not phonetic and has a lot of unusual vowel sounds. This is due to what linguists refer to as the Great Vowel Shift, which took place mostly between 1350 and 1500 AD. Many
vowel sounds disappeared from the language and those that remained
became shorter and began to be pronounced higher in the mouth. For
instance, before the vowel shift, “wipe” would have been
pronounced more like “weep,” “house” more like “whose,”
and “boot,” more like “boat.” By the end of this lingual shift,
the language had changed enough to be mostly incomprehensible to
speakers of earlier Middle English.

Historians
don't know why the language would have evolved so drastically over
such a short period of time, but they suspect it may have occurred as
a result of the Black Death.

Oh Black Death, you so crayzee.

The
Black Death caused most of the people in northern England to move
south, stirring up the the island's dialects. A revision of standard
pronunciations would have been necessary, just for the sake of
clarity. The decimated aristocracy were forced to begin marrying
beneath themselves, which created a new level of social mobility in a
culture where the upper and lower classes spoke two different
languages. English spellings were first recorded and standardized in
the middle of the vowel shift, which accounts for all our bizarre,
non-phonetic spellings.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Otherwise known as FOUR
F*CKING MONTHS b*tches! This is the longest I have managed to quit
smoking in at least ten years, or as my blogging BFF Christina likes
to say, the longest ever because I'm going to stick with it this
time.

I was going to check back in
with you guys two and a half months ago but stuff was going on and I
didn't get around to it. “Stuff” included my grandmother's
funeral and the arrival of thirty Irish-American relatives and their
opinions.

I'm still having revenge fantasies.

Here's what I managed to
write at the six-week point:

As far as I can tell,
it's been six weeks and one day since I quit smoking. It could be
anywhere from day forty-two to day forty-five, but I'm pretty sure
it's day forty-three. I'm crap at keeping track of stuff. I've been
counting the boxes of nicotine patches and I just opened my fourth
box yesterday. At two weeks a box that's six weeks and – wait, two
days? I don't know, because a couple of times the patch fell off, I
cried, and then I replaced it. Also it's a leap year, so I don't know
what the f*ck is going on anymore.

I stepped down to the
final step yesterday. The nicotine patch squirts a certain amount of
nicotine into your skin every day – not enough to stop you wanting
to rip someone's face off, but enough to stop you actually doing it,
usually. After a few weeks, you're supposed to swap it for a weaker
one and so forth, until finally you stop using them altogether, and
deal with your face-ripping impulses like a man, or in my case,
woman. That means I cry, or slap you, or cry whilst slapping you.
Quitting smoking is hard, which explains why I'm just getting around
to it.

I wish I
had finished that post, because it would have been interesting to
look back on my “progress so far.” The one thing I clearly
remember from that week:

I was at
a party where everyone was smoking, and I was all,
notsmokingnotsmokingnotsmoking, and this girl kept telling me
I might as well give it up cause it would never work. So I replied,
“Neither will your diet.” I'm usually not that big of an a**hole,
honestly, you guys, I swear.

She should have known better, anyway.

So,
without further ado, my Progress So Far:

I am so
angry I could rip someone's throat out with my teeth. Okay, not all
the time. It sort of comes and goes. I had thought that, by this
stage of the game, it would have just, you know, gone. I assumed it
was a symptom of physical withdrawal. It is not. It is the reason I
was smoking in the first place.

Who knew.

I
started to clue into this when I found myself in the presence of the
aforementioned relatives and their, ahem, opinions, without my usual
means of anger management therapy. Shouting at them obviously wasn't
the solution, because if it was I wouldn't have started smoking in
the first place. Instead, I was forced to explore alternative
measures, such as:

Storming
into my room, slamming the door and pacing around while muttering
about what b*tches they all are.

Avoiding
everyone.

Getting
into my car and turning up the stereo really, really loud, and then
just sitting there in the driveway like a weirdo because driving
angry is worse than driving drunk, you know.

This
is why they tell you to go to counseling when you're quitting
smoking, because when you're addicted to something there are usually
feelings involved. But I didn't
need to pay someone a hundred bucks an hour to tell me that when I
get pissed off I turn on myself, mostly because my mother already did
that when I was fifteen and got caught smoking at school.

The
jogging seemed to be helping, but I can't do it anymore because I've
got a pinched nerve in my back, which is a subject for another post.
I'm going to have to get a cross-trainer or a stationary bike or
something. The chiropractor recommended racewalking.

Ha ha ha ha good one doc.

Just
so you know, I did not get a back injury because I tried to jog
myself to death. I already had a back injury. I was totally only
jogging a moderate amount. I know that because I still managed to
gain ten pounds after going off the patch. Not that I wanted to tell
you that, because now you know how fat I am.

I'm
not eating very many lollipops at all anymore, and trying to stop
eating sweets altogether, now that I'm not constantly thinking about
smoking. I have the encroaching fat to worry about, and also my teeth
started to hurt. I tried sugar-free candy for a while, but I'm not
trying to contribute to methane emissions.

I'm sounding so sexy right now.

I
still feel like smoking on a pretty much daily basis, but the
toothpicks satisfy my hand-to-mouth habit and are much more effective
now that I've learned not to chew them up and swallow them.

"Chewing up toothpicks" belongs on the anger management list up there.

Monday, April 16, 2012

I live with a couple of my
mother's sisters. I don't have a husband or children so these women
are, for all practical purposes, my family. I have a mother, but she
doesn't come around very often cause we're weird. For instance:

We Have Far Too Many Damn
Mugs

Just to be clear, we have
this many mugs:

That's not even all of them, I might add.

And for some reason, people
(not me, THEM) keep buying more mugs. As if we needed them. Every
time someone brings home a new mug, they say, “There's no damn room
in here for this mug!” Every time.

The House is as Hot as Hell
Itself

Seriously, it's over 80
degrees in here right now. I've got my windows open and the fan on
and it's like, literally freezing outside but it's figuratively
boiling in here.

It's because we have a coal
furnace and it's really easy to overheat the house when you're
burning coal. But hang on, wait a minute...

Why the Hell Do We Have a
Coal Furnace?

It's 2012, who heats their house with coal anymore? Is this A
Christmas Carol? Are we Bob Cratchitt? I didn't think so. Where
the hell does the coal even come from?

Yes, I know it comes from
the coal mine, shuddup. Apparently, you can still buy coal for your
own personal use. Who knew.

Nothing says "Appalachia" like having your own coal bin.

The Blender is, Like, a
Million Years Old

Now, I don't mean to make it
sound like I'm picking on one particular household appliance, at the
exclusion of all the others. Except I am, cause all the other
appliances are fairly new and in good working order. It's just the
blender that appears to be a time-traveler from 1978.

Hey baby, what's your sign?

It doesn't work terribly
well anymore. I guess blending things is not a priority.

There Are BIG F*CKING SNAKES
in the Basement, I Guess

A couple of weeks ago I was
sitting up in my room working quietly away, and the aunts were down
in the basement cleaning out about fifty years' worth of my
grandparents' stuff, which they won't be needing anymore on account
of being dead. The neighbor boy, Nick, was down there helping them. I
could hear them talking cause they're loud as hell and the floors are
thin, although I couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but it
probably wasn't that interesting, anyway.

The afternoon wore on in
this manner until shrieks of “SNAKE! SNAKE! GET RID OF IT, NICK!!”
commenced. I was glad Nick was there because f*ck wrangling snakes.

Later, they were quick to
assure me that it wasn't a big deal, only a THIRTY-FOOT PYTHON that
crawled in through the window.

By "thirty foot python" I mean "small black snake." Naturally.

Seriously though, the snake
gets bigger every time they tell the story. It must be a mile long by
now.

I've come to eat your children, sssssssssssssss.

Also, Severed Heads

I walked into the “sewing
room” the other day to find this lying on the table:

Friday, April 13, 2012

Bet you didn't know that if
you type “fossil hoaxes” into Google you'll get about four real
results and about seventy bajillion EVOLUTION IS A LIE!!!!! results.
No, neither did I.

It made it really hard to research this. ~ Amy Watts

You tend to think of fossils
in general and fossil hoaxes in particular as being kind of modern
things. After all, they didn't really start digging up dinosaurs in
earnest until the late 1800s. Those of you who've been following
along at home will know that I'm about to knock your socks off with
some mind-blowing revelation about fossil-hoaxing in the ancient
world.

1) From at least 3,000 BC,
residents of the Mediterranean island of Malta collected fossilized
sharks' teeth. Shark teeth, especially the fossilized teeth of the
enormous prehistoric Megalodon, were considered sacred. Their
serrated edges also made handy tools for early Maltese potters who
wanted to decorate their goods with even rows of grooves and,
presumably, instill them with extra godliness. Fossilized marine
animals and mammoth tusks were also popular in Maltese temples.
Evidence suggests that “fossil” shark teeth and sea creatures
were manufactured on Malta from baked clay and limestone as early as
the Neolithic period.

2) According to medieval European legend, fossil sharks' teeth, known as “Maltese tongues,”
were capable of protecting against poison. St. Paul the Apostle was
bitten by a Maltese snake while shipwrecked on the island in 60 AD.
Paul was unharmed, but, as punishment to the island's snakes, he took
away their venom, eyes and tongues. Medieval Europeans therefore
called used fossilized Maltese sharks' teeth, or “tongue stones,”
to remove poison from their wine before drinking. The teeth were
mounted and hung from “languiers,” or decorative coral trees, at
banquets. Guests would choose a “tongue” and dip it in their wine
goblet to remove any poison. Maltese shark tooth fossils
became so popular that laws were passed to prevent their forgery.

"My brother died of poison!" "I told you not to trust that shifty-eyed shark tooth salesman."

3) So, by now you've probably
figured out that people didn't just suddenly start discovering
fossils out of nowhere the year after Darwin published The Origin
of Species. Some people have always believed that fossils were
the petrified corpses of dead animals. Ancient Greek philosopher,
Aristotle, put forth another theory, as he was wont to do – that
the fossils were never actually alive, but were formed in the stone
by a higher creative intelligence, or God. Christianity, which just
loves the sh*t out of Aristotle for some reason, picked up the theory
and will never, ever, ever let it go.

F*ck you, Aristotle.

But I didn't tell you that
just to be nasty to ancient Greek philosophers. In the 1700s, a
professor named Johann Beringer was Chief Physician to the Prince
Bishop of Wurzburg, and Chair of Natural History of the University of
Wurzburg. Beringer was what we'd now call a creationist; he supported
Aristotle's theory, that fossils were placed, intact, in the earth by
a higher intelligence, basically God.

Two of his colleagues,
Johann von Eckhardt and Ignatz Roderick, thought Beringer was wrong.
They also thought he was an obnoxious douchenozzle, or would have if
douchenozzles had been invented then. So, they came up with a plan.

Roderick and Von Eckhardt fabricated fossils out of limestone and planted them for Beringer to
discover during his next dig. These weren't just any fossils; they
showed spider webs, insects, even frogs in the act of mating. The
next dig yielded “fossils” with writing – in Hebrew and
Babylonian – on them. Beringer, completely taken in, rushed out and
wrote a whole book about it.

With illustrations by the author.

He didn't catch on until his
next dig turned up fossils with his own actual name on them. By then,
his book was published. Beringer, furious, filed a lawsuit. He won
the case. Roderick and Von Eckhardt were disgraced and their careers
ruined. Beringer published several more books, this time with real
fossils in them.

4) Some of you have probably
heard of the Piltdown Man. For more than 40 years, from 1912 to 1953,
it was believed to be the missing link between apes and humans.

No one really knows who
forged the skull of the Piltdown Man, but it was probably Charles
Dawson. Dawson, it was later pointed out, had already forged at least
38 fossils and antiquities, including an English Channel sea serpent,
which is not a thing that exists.

On 18 December 1912, Dawson
went before the Geological Society of London to show them a skull
that, he said, he received from a Piltdown gravel pit workman. The
skull had been smashed because, Dawson said, the workers thought it
was a coconut.

Sure they did.

Intrigued by this coconut,
er, skull, Dawson returned to the site to investigate. He discovered
an ape-like jawbone that, except for two very human-like molars,
appeared to be full of monkey teeth. The skull was human-like, but
too small to accommodate a modern-human-sized brain. The ape-like
jawbone seemed to confirm the contemporary theory of human evolution,
that the modern human brain evolved before the modern human diet.

Sense: It makes none. ~ Anrie

Other scientists called
bullsh*t on this one right away. G.S. Miller pointed out that it was
awfully convenient how the skull got smashed, since that allowed
Dawson and his crew to put it back together any way they pleased.
Prof. Arthur Keith of the Royal College of Surgeons used a copy of
the fossil fragments to reconstruct a Piltdown Man skull that looked
suspiciously like that of a modern human, because, as it would turn
out much, much later, that's exactly what it was.

Dawson turned up a second Piltdown Man
(called Piltdown II cause it was the sequel) in 1915, which seemed
validate his earlier find. He died in 1916, putting himself beyond
the reach of criticism. Scientists grew increasingly suspicious as
the decades passed, and more and more legitimate humanoid fossils
turned up, but never anything remotely like the Piltdown Man. By
1953, accurate dating technologies were finally invented.
Evolutionary biologists Joseph Weiner, Sir Wilfrid Edward Le Gros
Clark and Kenneth Page Oakley demonstrated that the Piltdown Man
fossil was a combination of 500 year old orangutan jaw, fossilized
chimpanzee teeth and a medieval human skull.

5) Meanwhile, in America, Nebraska
geologist and rancher Harold Cook discovered a fossilized tooth in
1917. The tooth was identified as belonging to an early species of
North American ape, named Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, but
referred to in the press as Nebraska Man.The
creature was believed to be similar to Java Man, or Homo
erectus.

Scientists
descended on the site in 1925 to look for the rest of the skeleton.
They found it, and, to their perhaps never-ending chagrin, realized
that it belonged, in fact, to an extinct species of peccary.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

The idea for this post came
up today on Solitary Mama's blog, where she writes about the dudes
she dates getting all butt-hurt about her blog posts and whining
about how she “obviously has a problem with them” because they
“read about it on her blog” even though, you know, the posts in
question had nothing to do with them and didn't mention them by name
and presumably, didn't even describe their physical features or
hobbies or behavior or anything. These are just some incredibly
insecure men who are also, somehow, simultaneously self-absorbed
enough to think that Christina's blog post must be about them,
because after all how could it not be about them, because
they're the most important thing in her life.

I'm extrapolating.

I'm not
surprised at all, because underneath all that chest hair and bravado,
men are total wimps. And of course, it takes an extraordinary level
of egocentrism to be insecure, because of all the time you have to
spend pondering every little thing someone else says or does and what
it has to do with you.

So,
anyway, her point was that she's considering not telling the men she
dates that she writes a blog, in order, I guess, to drag out the
process of discovering that she's dating an annoying jackass.

All the good ones are taken.

Of
course, a blog isn't the sort of thing you can hide forever, unless
you're dating my mother, who is the last person in America to not
even have an email. I mean, I could be wrong, I don't know what
Christina's dating style is, maybe she plans to keep Christina the
Blogger and Writer under wraps forever while she pretends to be
Christina the Zulu Princess or something. I'm not here to judge.

So,
let's assume you, Female Blogger, have refrained from telling your
new beau about your blog, out of the misguided belief that it's the
blog screwing up your dating life, and not the jackass's
jackass behavior screwing up your dating life. Let's go ahead
and pretend your creative efforts and hard-won skill are not
something to be proud of but, in fact, something to be ashamed of,
like an incurable STD.

I used to have opinions, but now I have you.

He's
going to see it on Facebook, anyway. Unless you just abandon your
blog every time you start dating someone new, in which case, you are
hereby evicted from the Blogosphere.

When he
finds your blog on Facebook, it's going to, as Christina put it, look
like you have a “blog secret.” I think you could get away with
that, since Facebook friending typically occurs in the very early
stages of a relationship.

The
alternative is to simply not friend the guy on Facebook, which is
something I happen to agree with, if only to avoid awkwardness in the
form of:

Having
the Relationship Status Talk, which is a thing now, thank you
Facebook for giving us extra dating problems. It's only awkward if
one of you doesn't want to do it, but that's kinda my point, cause
it's been awhile since I've met someone who's worth that level of
commitment.

Sure, I'll marry you, but not on Facebook.

Kissy-wissy
sh*t all up on my Wall. Seriously, dude, no one wants to see that.
There's an inbox for a reason.

Stalkerface
creepiness all up on my Wall. I'm not talking about obsessive
page-viewing or even liking things I posted two years ago or
whatever. I just don't want some guy all up on my page getting all
aggro and jealous and verbally abusive and stuff. That's never
actually happened, I'm just paranoid it might. I've totally been
attacked on other people's Walls, so it's only a matter of time
before someone gets stupid enough to do it on mine.

Having
the Why Did You Defriend Me Talk, which consists largely of, “You
mean you have to ask?”

Of
course, if you don't accept the new beau's friend request, then you
have to explain why. Either that, or pretend you haven't been on
Facebook yet and haven't seen it. This ruse will be harder and harder
to keep up, until it eventually precludes any chance of actually
accepting the friend request, ever, because then he'll see you were
lying and think there is something wrong with you, because, you know,
there is.

I
totally approve of telling the Fresh Meat about my blog. By which I
mean, I actually insist he read it. I don't get embarrassed or
uncomfortable or “feel weird” when people read my blog, even
obsessively, or when they comment on it, even angrily. Believe it or
not, I like that sort
of thing. It means I won.

I
write this blog so that people can read it. If I went around not
telling people about it, I wouldn't be doing it right.

I'm
a writer, and that's a big part of my identity. I require a man to
read, and more importantly, enjoy, my work before I'll even consider
getting serious. I know other writers don't necessarily feel that
way, but I do. And before you say it, yes, I've been informed that I
will never find a man if I'm going to have that attitude.

Friday, April 6, 2012

According to my downloadable
desktop calender, it's Easter Weekend all weekend this weekend. It
lists all the holidays in every country of the world and I haven't
figured out how to make it stop doing that, so this is what I get to
see:

Good Friday. ALL DAY.

Just so you know, that goes
all the way down the page, until it gets to Sunday, and then it says
“Easter Easter Easter Easter Sultan of Johor's Birthday.” That
one's Malaysian, in case you're wondering.

1) According to the Venerable Bede, a 7th Century Christian scholar and historian known
as the Father of English History, Easter takes its name from the old
English “Eostur-monath” or “Easter month,” named after the
Anglo-Saxon pagan goddess Eostre. Eostur-monath, which corresponds
with the modern month of April, saw various festivals celebrated in
Eostre's honor, along with the exchange of eggs and the baking of
cakes, two traditions shared by numerous pre-Christian cultures. She
was named after the Old English word for spring, “eastre,” and
her symbol was a rabbit.

I always wondered about that bunny thing.

2) Most pagan religions
celebrated a spring equinox holiday featuring a resurrected deity. In
Sumer (modern Iraq) the goddess Ishtar was hung, nude, from a stake
until her death, after which she was resurrected from the underworld.
The ancient gods Horus, Mithras and Dionysus were killed and
resurrected in their respective mythologies. I know lots of people
who like to point out these cross-cultural mythological similarities
as if they're shockingly important (“Look, you guys! Horus was
JEEESUSSSS!”). These people have obviously never heard of an
archetype.

3) Many of early Christianity's
best converts came from religions or cults that had strong springtime
resurrection myths. The Roman cult of the Sol Invictus, or InvincibleSun, appeared near the end of the Roman Empire, probably as a
re-establishment of one of the older sun-worshiping cults. The cult
began in 274 AD, well after the birth of Christ, and continued into
the 5th Century, so long that early church leaders had to
start warning against its dangers. There is some evidence, as
suggested by Roman mosaics depicting the Sol Invictus, that they had him mixed up with Christ a little.

Hint: That's not Jesus.

4) Religious historians believe
that the death and resurrection stories, and ancient pagan
traditions, were added to the story of Jesus's life to help
Christianity compete with other religions when it was still in its
infancy. That's what they say now.
I doubt there was a group of guys sitting around somewhere, 1800
years ago, going, “Man, Christianity just isn't gaining any ground.
What do you think we should do? I know, let's use that egg-laying
rabbit thing. That's good stuff.”

"Let's give 'em chocolate, everybody loves chocolate."

5) According to this website,
the Easter bunny makes it into Christian mythology because Jesus, at
some point, befriended a rabbit. No, I don't remember that being in
the Bible, either.

Legend has it that, from
Black Friday to Easter Sunday, the little rabbit waited for Jesus in
the Garden of Gethsemane, cause I guess they had a date, or
something. Most people would wait
for about half an hour, realize they'd been stood up, and go off in a
huff, but not this little rabbit. It waited faithfully for its friend
Jesus, until, on Sunday morning, the resurrected Christ appeared to
do whatever Jesus Christ did with the pet rabbit I didn't even know
He had.

Eggs,
of course, are a fertility symbol, and part of traditional Easter dishes for Catholics who are forbidden to eat eggs during Lent, the
forty days of fasting immediately prior to Easter. During Lent, eggs
that weren't hatched would have been hard-boiled and saved.

The
dyeing and eating of the eggs came to be symbolic with the
resurrection of Christ, with the eggs originally dyed red to
symbolize the blood of Christ, and the cracking of the egg symbolic
of Christ's escape from the tomb. So where does the rabbit come in?

It's
said that the idea of the egg-laying Easter Bunny originated with
German Protestants who wanted to keep the Easter egg tradition, but
ditch the Lenten-fasting tradition. That ultra-reputable website that
gives us the legend of Christ's pet rabbit also gives us a
pre-Christian origin for the Easter bunny myth. Apparently the
goddess Eostre rescued a bird from the freezing winter snows. The
bird was injured and Eostre healed it, out of either compassion or
boredom; it's not entirely clear. In the process, for some
reason, she also turned the bird into a rabbit. Out of respect for
the rabbit's true nature as a bird, Eostre gave it the ability to lay
eggs, but only on one day out of the year. Cause that was easier than just letting it stay a bird in the first place, I guess.

Monday, April 2, 2012

While it's been made pretty
clear that no one else can join the triad (triad being three after
all, as some asshat on Twitter or Triberr was quick to point out
last time, even though, you know, we already knew), the other bitches
and I have discussed it and decided that we're going to allow people
to write their own Bitchery posts. This is something like those kits
you can buy in the children's crafts aisle at MallWart, you know, the
Make Your Own [fill in the blank] deal where the thing you wind up
making is kinda small, flimsy, and constructed largely of macrame cord, but that's just what you get for not being as
awesome as me, I mean, us.

"Congratulations, it's a...what is it?"

Here, my little
grasshoppers, are the three basic elements of bitchery. Slap these
suckers together about any old way, and you get a bunch of angry f*ckers shouting at you on Facebook.

Or is that just me?

Speak Your Mind

Apparently this is one of
the bad behaviors my grandmother, a paragon of politeness and good
manners, tried to root out of my black little heart early on. She was
too ladylike to ever find fault with anyone, however, and also, my
mother was around, totally modeling bad behavior.

Be Funny

Actually being funny means
that people will forgive you for number one, most of the time. I
don't mean funny in that “I was actually insulting you but now that
you're offended I'm going to say I was joking, and try to convince you you're oversensitive” kind of way.
That's for loser boyfriends. You want to be genuinely funny, and if you want to insult someone, make it stupid people, since they probably don't read your blog and if they do, their enraged comments will
only add to the fun. If you f*ck this up, kid, you'll get fired from the
Internet.

We can do that, you know.

Be Insanely Smart, and Hot,
and Kinda Scary

That's three things, I know,
but I couldn't decide which was most important. You're on your own
for the first one, but you can accomplish the last two easily by
setting yourself on fire.

Ha ha ha, ha ha.

Follow us on Twitter to get
bitchery delivered in 140 characters or less, and like our Facebook page for updates on our upcoming link-up blog. In the meantime, feel
free to post your own Bitchery Replies on the Facebook page, either
in link form or in long, rambling Wall Post Rant form, whichever
suits your personal style.